That’s five stops now.
Seven is ideal, but five is enough. Especially with how close in proximity they are to each other. There shouldn’t be any problems with finding food now.
“Meow.”
The only problem with this place is this stupid cat. It hasn’t eaten in Roger’s presence for at least two days. That has to be a long time for a cat. Roger’s definitely not going to make the mistake of feeding that little runt again.
But it’s always here, right next to Roger. Either it really hasn’t eaten for two days or it sneaks off when Roger is sleeping and catches a mouse or something.
It licks his face in the morning, tries to cuddle with him when Roger lies down and is always purring or meowing or rubbing against Roger’s leg when they’re walking.
Roger has to get rid of this cat.
There’s got to be a way to ditch it somewhere.
How about the next dumpster Roger goes to, he’ll pick the cat up and put it in the dumpster and close the lid?
That should work. It’s impossible for a cat to open a dumpster lid, heavy as they are these days.
And what better time to do it than now?
“Meow.”
Chapter 60
Roger wakes up to the cat cuddled up on his chest. Its shitty hair has shed all over his dirty clothes. The bastard got out of the dumpster.
God damn it.
He tries running away for a day. When he comes back, it’s there.
He tries giving it to the animal shelter. Three days later, it’s back.
He tries putting it in the back of a random car. Back within the hour.
This cat isn’t going anywhere. Roger shouldn’t have fed this nerve grinding little ragged fur cat. Now this damn cat sees Roger as a provider of food. Whether it is direct or indirect, whether something drops from what Roger is eating or if the cat just simply follows him to a dumpster.
Roger tries starving himself four days. The cat catches a mouse two days into it.
God damn it, there’s no thinking time with this thing stinking up the thinking air.
Roger hates this frumpy fucking feline.
The cat loves him like a father, like a father who is secretly a superhero.
Chapter 61
It’s been almost a month in the new place.
The cat’s still right next to Roger. Purring.
“Meow.”
Roger’s trying to ignore it again. It’s going great. Really great.
The cat’s got to be around three or four years old right now.
Average lifespan of a cat; twelve years, maybe thirteen or fifteen. Thirteen minus four is nine.
Nine years to go.
There should be a deduction from living on the streets. Something like five years. Nine minus five.
Four years. Four more years to go before Shitfur is out of the picture.
Roger can wait.
Plus, tragic things happen everyday. Cars hit cats all the time. Dogs chase cats down and try to kill them. Shit like that happens a lot. Maybe Roger will get lucky.
He named the cat Shitfur. It’s appropriate. And if the cat’s going to be around for a while, might as well. Shitfur Needy is the full name.
Chapter 62
There is one thing Roger hasn’t tried yet. He doesn’t want to try it because it’s not been long enough since he’s last been there.
Hermit Bridge.
The plan is to swim across the river and disappear to Hermit Bridge. Shitfur can’t swim. Roger found this out about a week ago when Roger decided to bathe. Shitfur went up to the edge of the water, but didn’t go two steps in. It was the greatest relief Roger’s had in weeks.
There is one problem with the plan. Roger’s going to have to stay out there for at least two weeks. Maybe even a month. That’s a lot of food, fifteen meals minimum. One meal a day should be enough.
A few days ago Roger found three dented cans of beans in the dumpster outside of the grocery store. That’s when the idea hit him. He knew he was going to utilize Shitfur’s inability to swim, but he wasn’t sure of how until he found the beans. Canned food keeps for a hell of a long time. If he can just get enough cans to supply himself for a month, that cat should forget about him.
It’s got a brain the size of a walnut. It shouldn’t take longer than a month for Shitfur to forget.
And there’s no way Shitfur will be able to find him at Hermit Bridge. Not that far. No way.
As soon as Roger has enough food, he’s going to try. That shouldn’t be more than a month away with how well he’s been finding food in this new area.
Roger does some calculating. That works out. Hermit Bridge should be okay to go to by that time. Whatever filth crept into Hermit Bridge should be gone by then. For now he’ll keep the cans in some brush along the river, just outside of the park.
Chapter 63
Everything seems to be going pretty well.
Sleep has come easily to Roger knowing that his plan to get rid of that cat will soon be carried out. And Roger rarely goes a day without food now. Almost twice a week he finds another can of food to add to his stash.
Roger has eight cans now. Over halfway there.
“Meow.”
Shitfur isn’t letting up one bit, though. It’s been since the last time Roger accidentally dropped some of that turkey and ham sandwich on the ground that he fed it anything. Shitfur has been feeding himself at Roger’s spots. He digs around and always finds something. If he can, Shitfur even jumps into the dumpster when he can’t find anything on the ground nearby. Roger doesn’t even bother closing the lid while Shitfur is in there, he knows the cat is going to get out again, so why bother? Why get your hopes up?
Sometimes Roger doesn’t find anything.
“There’s nothing in there, Shitfur.” Roger calls back as he walks away. Damn cat is wasting his time.
“Meow.” Shitfur, with a bit of food in his mouth, prances up to Roger.
Shitfur probably eats more than Roger.
Roger hates Shitfur.
Shitfur loves Roger.
Shitfur found a turkey leg one day when Roger couldn’t find anything. A god damn turkey leg. That’s not something a bum like Roger would miss.
Just a few more weeks and Roger’ll never have to see that cat again. A few more weeks and Roger’s on vacation at Hermit Bridge. Two more weeks and Roger’ll be able to think again.
A few more weeks.
Chapter 64
It’s time.
Roger found half of a case of canned soup in the grocery store dumpster. That puts him at eighteen cans now.
It’s time to get back to the way things should be. It’s time to get back to quiet thinking. It’s time to be alone. It’s time for Hermit Bridge.
Roger knew he was going to need a backpack or something to carry all of the cans of food, so he’d been in the market for one of those. It’s not all that hard to find an intact backpack.
On his way back from one of his food stops, he saw a backpack sitting on the handle of a bike.
He took it.
When he was walking away he looked in the backpack and found a bunch of college books dealing with apparel merchandising and other fashion bullshit.
He was initially happy about it, but then as he thought about it more he started getting pissed.
Ugh, fashion. What’s more useless than that?
Christ.
Shit has more uses than fashion. At least shit fertilizes the ground.
And how the hell can you teach what fashion is? How can you learn what the hell it is? What kind of society has college level courses for fashion?
Comfort has murdered function.
Comfort sexed with ignorance, and fashion was born. It was the ugliest baby the world has ever seen.
But Roger has a backpack now. The cans are in it. It’s strapped securely on his back. He looks up at the sky and smiles with a sigh of relief. It’s a nice, hot and sunny day. A bit of a breeze to keep it cool.
First Roger walks over the bridge and to the other side of the river where he estimates he’ll be coming out of the river. There he strips down as much as he can, tries to hide it as much as possible, then hurries in just his underwear back to the other side. He passes a few pedestrians on the bridge. They give him a look. A few cars honk too.
“Meow.”
Shitfur follows him the whole time.
Not anymore, puke skin cat.
It’s time to say good bye.
Shitfur just purrs. He doesn’t have any idea what’s about to happen. Idiot cat.
Roger wades into the water. He’ll only have to swim a small part of the river before he can touch the bottom again. He gets to that point and stops. Those shit brown eyes of Shitfur’s are right on him. He can feel them watching him go.
Roger looks back.
There’s Shitfur sitting at the very edge of the water. His head is tilted with the curiosity of a cat. Roger sees him meow but can’t hear it.
“Fucking cat.” And he swims to the other side of the river.
Chapter 65
Roger arrives dry and alone at Hermit Bridge. The sun’s rays dried him off quickly on the long refreshing walk. It’s good to be back. Everything tainted about the bridge is gone. It’s good and quiet.
The first few days he spends there he catches himself thinking about where Shitfur might be or what he’s doing.
Don’t think about that. It’s a damn cat, a cat that he'll never see again. He’s probably found someone else to annoy the shit out of, anyway. Some sympathetic animal loving family saw him and thought it was just the cutest thing the way he begged for food.
Forget about it.
Be quiet.
Let it go.
It could be dead already.
Cats live shorter lives.
Just relax, alright?
Relax.
Chapter 66
It’s been nearly two weeks since he left. It’s rained more than it has been sunny. Roger picked the perfect time to come out here. He hasn’t seen or heard another human being since he left. The only sort of animated life he’s seen are squirrels and bunnies and birds.
Roger pulls out another can of soup and opens it with a tiny pocket knife which is duller than an IRS auditor. There’s really no memory of where he got the knife, but it really doesn’t matter either.
What matters is that he has it.
He eats the soup as the rain downpours.
There’s five cans left.
That’s about right. He’s eaten one a day since he’s been here.
That means five more days until he heads back to the city.
Good.
The paranoia is starting to creep back to Roger, and rightfully so. Someone’s bound to find this place if he stays out here any longer than that.
What about the new spots he’s got back in town? What if someone has taken those? Roger doesn’t want to deal with that shit again. And where else would he go if bums started to invade his new territory?
Four more nights. Roger’ll leave right away on the fifth day. If Roger doesn’t have his days mixed up, that should be Friday. Friday means specialty pizza at the buffet stop. The last Friday Roger was there they had bacon cheeseburger pizza. That’s motivation enough to go back.
Four more nights.
That cat should be long gone by then.
He better be.
Chapter 67
On the last day before he leaves Roger decides to explore the area. South of the bridge the creek runs into a heavily wooded forest. He goes that way. It’s early afternoon yet. Roger is in the middle of the woods. After doing nothing but lazing under and around Hermit Bridge, it feels good to move.
There’s a deer.
As soon as it sees him, it jets off with incredible agility.
Be afraid, deer. It has every reason to be. Roger knows it’s not him the deer is scared of, but the human race itself.
And why not? It has every right. What other mammal kills for sport? What other mammal kills more of its own kind? And for what? Oil? Power? Religious purposes?
Just because. Because comfort has bored us. Because human nature is apart from original nature. Because other life means nothing to us. Because of the addiction to selfishness. Because, because, because…because of the wonderful things we do.
Just fucking because.
What excuse does the human race have?
Be afraid, smart deer, be very afraid. Death by murder is humanity’s most abundant achievement, but that’s not the right word.
Guns, tanks with guns, bombs, bombs with guns. Armies of remote controlled idiots fighting for their country, fighting for nothing, dying for nothing.
Some dumb saying pops into Roger’s head.
You gotta spend money to make money.
Christ.
You gotta spend lives to make lives.
Power and deluded perception.
Inverts and insanity.
Killing calamity.
This is humanity.
Be scared shitless, smart deer. Shitless.
Chapter 68
That cat better be gone.
Three weeks.
It better be gone.
Roger gets back sometime just before noon. The sun shines. He’s where he usually sleeps in the park, right near the river. It’s not far from where he ditched that cat.
No sight of Shitfur so far. No sign of that shit-little-ball-of-puke-with-legs.
Good.
It worked.
Time to go get some food soon. Travelling works up the appetite.
First though, Roger basks in the shining sun.
Alone.
Finally.
Alone and happy.
No god damn cat scratching at his solitude. No cat catching bits of food from what Roger eats. No cat purring that disgusting sound of need-need-need, that can’t-do-a-single-thing-alone sound.
God, it’s good to be back.
It’s good to be alone.
Chapter 69
No cat at the pizza buffet.
Nothing there but good eating.
Chapter 70
No cat the next day.
No cat at the diner.
Nothing but some good apple pie.
Chapter 71
The day after.
No cat at the grocery store.
No damn food, either.
Chapter 72
“Meow.”
Ah hell.
Purr, purr, purr.
Roger opens his eyes to Shitfur’s face right in front of him.
“Meow.”
There’s no way. Almost four weeks it’s been, a month. How could such a puny brain hold information for that long? It’s impossible.
“Meow.”
Yet here’s Shitfur, shittier than ever.
Purr.
He looks fatter than before.
“Meow.”
More energetic.
“Meow.”
God damn it. There’s nothing else Roger can try to do to get rid of Shitfur. He could move again, but that’s not at all a logical option, there’s no where else Roger knows of. He’ll stay here.
Shitfur will stay here.
“Meow.”
“Meow.”
Purrrrrrrrrrrr.
Damn it.
Chapter 73
Square one.
Shitfur follows Roger everywhere.
Shitfur even learns how to swim. Roger found this out the last time he decided to bathe. It took less than an hour for that cat to figure it out. For as quickly as Shitfur learned how to do that, you’d think he would be smart enough to care for himself, by himself, more importantly.
After that, Roger completely gave up trying to think of new ways to be alone. The only thing he does now is tries to feed Shitfur really fatty foods. It doesn’t matter if he feeds him now. Shitfur is here for good. The only thing left to do is wait, wait for the end of Shitfur’s life,
either tragic and long and full, or short and sweet.
“Don’t even try.” Roger says to Shitfur. He’s trying to lick himself less dirty. “It’s pointless, you fool. Can’t you see you’re a part of the mess?”
Roger’s started talking to Shitfur, telling him how ignorant he is to the world, how he’s too dumb to know that he is a part of the problems in this world, how he as a puny-parasitic-can’t-get-rid-of cat is the epitome of human society and the filth that it produces. This is the sad decay that is problematic in all of the deep questions, and yet no one does a thing about it. Everyone is too busy thinking about their budget and when they will have enough money to buy their next precious little something whether it’s a new car or a boat or a house or a television, etc.
Roger talks to Shitfur a lot now. He has a lot to say to that cat. A lot to say with a lot of time to say it, that’s if everything goes accordingly with what Roger doesn’t want to happen.
That seems to be the trend these days.
Chapter 74
It’s a Thursday, Friday or a Saturday. Roger has lost rack. It doesn’t make any difference whether he knows or not, all of his food spots aren’t really day-specific, anyway. And that’s about the only reason to know what day it is.
It’s an early afternoon in the park. Roger is watching a bunch of men in shnazzy-gotta-impress-the-women-because-I-got-nothing-else-to-offer suits walking around. There’s some other guy with them who’s carrying a huge camera. He’s wearing a backwards baseball cap and prominently chewing bubbling gum
Shitfur is taking a nap.
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